Most Useful Information May 2024
Sleeping in cars, stealing cars, photographing fudge, eating poo, and aliens
What’s the point?
I have a car. When I’m at home my car is parked on the street outside my house. When my car is parked on the street outside my house it’s usually locked. My street is a nice street. There are trees. No traffic. A park with pull-up bars and a playground for children less than half a block away. It’s a five minute walk to hiking trails along the river. People are always walking their dogs and saying hello and telling me when there’s been a bear spotted in the neighborhood.
I know my neighbors. My neighbors know my car. A couple years ago the catalytic converter was stolen from my car a lot. Somehow my neighbors always knew. They said things like, “I heard your catalytic converter was stolen (again). That sucks, man!” One neighbor said, “You need to park closer to the curb. The way you park made it too easy for them.” It was my fault, apparently. I parked closer to the curb. My catalytic converter was stolen again.
My neighbors and catalytic converters are only relevant because they characterize my neighborhood as generally safe and friendly, where people pay attention to what’s going on. Care about what’s going on. Still, some shady stuff happens sometimes.
A couple weeks ago, on a Friday night my car was parked on the street outside my house. My car was locked. Knowing neither of us would remember when it mattered most, Adin took a bunch of diapers and put them in my car. Without meaning to cast aspersions, I think Adin forgot to lock my car after putting diapers in the backseat. It’s not a big deal. Certainly I’ve done the same thing. Years ago now I rode my bike to Safeway, parked my bike outside, didn’t lock it cuz I was just dashing in, ran inside, bought groceries, walked outside Safeway, and walked home. Went about the rest of my day and went to bed. Woke up at 5AM and remembered I’d left my bike unlocked outside Safeway. Luckily, my bike was still there. I forget to lock things. No big deal.
The reason I think Adin forgot to lock my car is because the next morning I took a car key off the table next to the front door, walked down a few steps and into the street. I did not unlock my car because it was already unlocked. I sat down inside and smelled cigarettes. I don’t smoke. Adin doesn’t smoke. Margo doesn’t smoke. Weird. I looked around. Nothing was missing. Nothing out of place. The seat hadn’t been moved. The change lying around hadn’t been taken. All I can think is someone needed a place to spend the night and spent the night in my car. They were polite about it.
I mention all this because the three books I read this month are short enough to read while spending the night in a random unlocked car parked on the street of a quiet, friendly neighborhood. One of the books was in the car and for all I know my guest read it.
Enjoy!
Closer by Dennis Cooper. First published in 1990.
Dennis Cooper was recommended to me a few times in a few different places, but I was always scared to read him. Part of me felt like I would and should love it. Another part of me felt like I couldn’t handle it. His books sounded too violent and sadistic and depraved and messed up. I don’t tend to shy away from unpleasant things, but I’ve got limits.
In Culvert County, Maryland last summer I wandered into a small used bookstore. They had an aliens section. Books about aliens. For some reason their aliens section included books about ghosts. For some reason their books about ghosts included a book about ghost towns in Southern Idaho. Being from Northern Idaho, but having visited ghost towns in Southern Idaho I was surprised, confused, and charmed. I bought the book. Almost equally surprisingly they had a copy of Closer by Dennis Cooper. The first in his five novel sequence known as “The George Miles Cycle.” I bought it as well.
George Miles is a teenager in Closer. Everyone is enamored with him. Everyone wants to have sex with him. A lot of people do have sex with him.
Each chapter focuses on a different person in George’s life. John is a painter and a punk:
Punk orders us to demystify everything in the world or we’ll be doomed to a future so decadent, atomic bombs will seem just one more aftershave lotion and so on. What you seem to like in my drawings is how they reveal the dark underside, or whatever it’s called, of people you wouldn’t think were particularly screwed up. But you should know the real goal of my work is a Dorian Gray type of thing. I make you look awful, and I start to look really good…
Sounds like an M.O. for Dennis Cooper. George Miles loves Disneyland, but there’s something darker going on. The same is true for all the characters in Closer. Also, Cooper is demystifying sex and violence so that we’re not doomed to a decadent future of atomic bombs, which makes Closer a hopeful book. Despite how tragic and fucked the events depicted are.
John is nervous his paintings aren’t what he thinks they are, aren’t important. Instead, without realizing it, they might just be an empty space for him to place confusion. Feeling like an empty space, fearing you might be an empty space, and filling an empty space is common among characters in Closer. David, a delusional teen who thinks he is a famous singer (but isn’t), speaks about singing lyrics he didn’t write:
I didn’t write these ingenuous words. They were sold to me for an unquotable price, then I rehearsed them until they appeared to describe my emotions. But if their emotions were mine I wouldn’t be where I am. I’d be out in the audience, familiarizing myself with the way I feel, instead of processing somebody else’s clichés. I guess it’s a testament to my intelligence that I can edit myself out of life, though it leaves me a little upset by the sight of my own shadow. Who does it really belong to, this mannequin I’m so adept at portraying or…?
David is a void filled with words he bought. Those words describe emotions, but he doesn’t feel those emotions. He isn’t filled with emotion. His fans are themselves voids waiting to be filled with emotions he conveys but are not his. Like John’s paintings, David's songs are space for people to put their confusion. David says he doesn’t share in that same confusion, but he also doesn’t know who or what he is. He’s a mannequin belonging to someone else. On the next page he wonders if he’s just a bomb filled with “blood, guts, and bones.” Twice he compares himself to inanimate objects. Mannequins wear clothes but have nothing inside. The inside of a bomb is lethal. David is either nothing or lethal.
David thinks he looks like George. George is pretty. Loves Disneyland. Lives with his dad. His mom died. George is probably too passive. George is a void that most people around him want to physically fill. People also believe being with George will fill their void. When David dies tragically his parents tell George that David spoke about him all the time and he meant so much to David and they must have been such great friends. George tells them he barely knew David. Spoke to him maybe twice. George always thought David was a little crazy. There’s a disconnect between how people see the world and themselves and how others see the world and others.
Phillipe, an older man George gets involved with, enjoys eating George’s shit as a sex act. George voids himself. Pierre eats his void. Phillipe brings along a friend, Tom, for one of his sessions with George. The friend misunderstands George’s passiveness for desire to no longer be alive. George goes over to Tom’s house and Tom begins to mutilate George before he realizes he misunderstood. George doesn’t want to die. George walks home, bleeding, and asks his dad to call an ambulance.
George’s dad isn’t always kind. Directly asking him for help is moving. Disarming. It’s a turning point.
In the final section a guy named Steve turns a garage into a dance club. It’s here that David dies. Steve is always asking where George is. He seems to care about George. He seems worried about him. Even though terrible events are depicted, Closer is very sweet. Everyone feels empty. Everyone is a void. Everyone is searching for something. Everyone cares about George. In the middle of confusion, sex, and violence, it is touching to see care.
Rent Boy by Gary Indiana. First published in 1994.
Dennis Cooper and Gary Indiana are conspiring to convince me that eating feces is a common sex act. It doesn’t have as big of a role in Rent Boy but it's there. A better use of poop in Rent Boy is by food photographer Bruce the Pooch, who Danny aka Billy aka Mark works for from time to time. Bruce needs to photograph a piece of fudge for a magazine. The fake fudge they have isn’t photographing well. Bruce asks what everyone ate last. He selects Danny to go to the bathroom. Danny comes back with a turd formed into the perfect piece of fudge and photographed for a magazine.
It’s a minor scene in a short book, but illustrative. Things sold to us in glossy magazines might look nice but they’re literal shit. More than that the consumerism pervading modern life is shit. It pushes us to buy shit. Everything is a commodity. Everything is for sale. Even our poop. It’s awful.
Danny works at a bar where famous writers like to hang out. When he’s not working at the bar and not working for Bruce he is having sex for money. When Danny isn’t working any of his various jobs he studies architecture at Rutgers. During sex with clients his mind often wanders from whatever sex he’s doing to the Hagia Sophia.
Danny is friends with another rent boy named Chip. Chip gets Danny involved with some type of Robin Hood doctor who wants to steal kidneys from rich people and give them to poor people who can’t afford surgery. Or that’s what Doctor Crashnitz says. He wants to “redistribute wealth, biologically speaking.” In reality he is using a couple of poor boys to steal a kidney from a rich guy and give it to the wife of an even richer guy. Danny catches on to the plan, tries to spoil it, fails, cleans his apartment, changes his name, and disappears.
The book is written as a series of letters to a man named J. He is an ex-boyfriend of Danny. He convinced Danny to write him letters. Danny hopes they’ll get back together, but at the end of the book we find out that Danny isn’t Danny’s real name. J doesn’t know who this guy is. Danny is a void. Or he wants to be. To protect himself. Danny says, “I felt… unbelievably tired. Tired to the point where I could no longer protect myself from reality.” Different names, different jobs, different lovers, all of them are put in place to stave off reality. Whatever reality is.
Reality might be a fear of death. Or a fear of AIDS. AIDS is in the back of everyone’s mind. Bruce wants to have sex with Danny. Danny is open to it but at that particular moment feels ill. Bruce’s immediate concern is that Danny has AIDS. When its clear that Danny doesn’t have AIDS but is too sick to fuck, Bruce loses interest but pretends to care. “I could see him brimming over with these artificial emotions that would dissolve without a trace as soon as he’d had what he wanted.”
Danny leaves:
I got out of there but first we had to make a bunch of wounded bird noises at each other like we’d had this wonderful talk and become much closer than we’d been before. I acted like I’d seen Bruce’s vulnerable side for the first time and come to realize what a truly majestic guy he really was, and he had this “Don’t thank me, that’s just the way I am” thing on his face.
Bruce is like his fudge photograph. He presents himself as a loving and caring friend and boss, but he’s only interested in getting what he wants out of Danny. If he can’t, he’ll pretend to care, but he doesn’t care. Bruce isn’t a sweet treat. He’s a piece of shit.
Nobody is who they say to be. Bruce says he cares about puking Danny. He doesn’t. Danny says he is Danny. He isn’t. Doctor Crashnitz says he cares about Chip and Danny and helping those who can’t help themselves. He doesn’t. Fudge says it’s fudge. It’s not.
Perhaps one exception. Danny does care about Chip. Truly, seemingly. He tries to convince Chip to pull out of the kidney gambit, but Chip persists. I could be persuaded that Danny doesn’t actually care about Chip, but I didn’t see it. However, when Chip is murdered and nailed to the wall of Danny’s apartment, Danny is quick to clean and flee. Not much remorse or feeling.
Chip and Danny are disposable commodities to Crashnitz. It’s not just because they are poor prostitutes. The guy they steal a kidney from is wealthy with a career. Rich people and poor people are both commodities bought and sold. It doesn’t matter if a magazine has fudge or shit as long as it sells. It doesn’t matter if someone gets off eating your poop as long as they pay. It doesn’t matter if you steal someone’s kidney, kill him, and kill two young sex workers who helped as long as you get paid enough. The world revolves around money. Everything is defined by whether or not it makes money.
Danny buys a Dennis Cooper book. He talks about reading it but never reads it. In Closer and Rent Boy everyone is empty, void, meaningless. Closer and Rent Boy depict depravity, violence, and sex. The difference is everyone in Closer is searching for wholeness. In Rent Boy everyone has given up searching and is only interested in money. Cooper, I think, has more of a reputation for being sadistic and transgressive, but ultimately the world of Closer feels more welcoming and safe than the world of Rent Boy.
The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark. First published in 1970.
The Driver’s Seat opens with Lise shopping for a new dress to wear on vacation. She finds one she likes. Beautiful colors. The saleswoman helping Lise mentions that the dress is made of stain-resistant fabric. Lise can’t believe it. “‘Do you think I spill things on my clothes?’ the customer shrieks. ‘Do I look, as if I don’t eat properly?’” She doesn’t buy the dress.
Instead she goes to another store. Finds some clothes that clash. Asks if they’re stain resistant. The saleswoman is confused. Recommends dry cleaning. Lise buys the clothes. On her way out she can hear the employees making fun of her. Lise laughs as she walks out.
Lise leaves for vacation. At the airport she annoys the people around her. On the plane she makes a man so uncomfortable he switches seats. He’s truly frightened by her. On the plane she meets another man, Bill, who thinks the plane food is full of toxins. Full of Yin. Not enough Yang. Bill is going to open a macrobiotic center
with a room behind the public dining hall, a room for strict observers who are on Regime Seven. Regime Seven is cereals only, very little liquid. You take such a very little liquid that you can pee only three times a day if you’re a man, two if you’re a woman. Regime Seven is a very elevated regime in macrobiotics. You become like a tree. People become what they eat.
Bill wants to have sex with Lise. He needs an orgasm everyday as part of his Yin and Yang macrobiotic diet. Lise isn’t interested. She tells him she has a boyfriend that she’s meeting in whatever country they’re traveling to. Lise, who seems crazy, seems to think Bill is crazy. Still she humors him. They make plans to meet in a bar after Lise meets up with her boyfriend, who doesn’t exist.
On the plane we’re told that tomorrow morning Lise will be found dead. The rest of the novel plots how Lise gets from the plane to death.
Lise meets an old lady named Mrs. Friedke. Lise says she is looking for a friend. We don’t know who. Mrs. Friedke wants to buy some slippers for her nephew. Her nephew will arrive late at night and she wants him to be comfortable. On their way to the store they pass the hotel Bill is staying at. Lise tells Mrs. Friedke she’s avoiding a man in that hotel. Mrs. Friedke starts to be frightened of Lise, but gets over it. They go to a department store. Mrs. Friedke falls asleep in a fitting room. Lise leaves her and wanders the store. They meet up again. Mrs. Friedke says she’s a Jehovah’s Witness. Even though she believes in the afterlife she doesn’t like to fly on planes where the pilot believes in the afterlife. She doesn’t trust them. Eventually Mrs. Friedke goes back to her hotel to sleep and leaves Lise to find her friend.
Streets are blocked because of student protests. Lise acts increasingly strange. She hires a guy to drive her to her hotel. She steals his car, drives up to a police officer, asks if he carriers a revolver, says if he does he could shoot her, and drives off.
In the end Lise meets Mrs. Friedke’s nephew, who appears to be a murderer in recovery. Somehow Lise knows and manipulates him, almost forces him, to murder her.
Lise might, like characters in Closer and Rent Boy, be empty. Void. But she handles it different. She is constantly claiming personas and lives that don’t belong to her. Rather than appear empty she appears overfull. She is everything. Everyone. People find it confusing. People find it terrifying. It doesn’t work for her. She can’t survive in the world like that. She dies.
The Driver’s Seat dabbles in belief. Bill with Yin and Yang, Mrs. Friedke with Jevohah’s Witness. Also, mental health. Lise and Mrs. Friedke’s nephew are both mentally unstable. It touches on politics with student protests and Mrs. Friedke shares her views on gender equality with Lise. Lise is clearly lonely, unwell, and uncared for. The novel is saying something about the loneliness of life and how that fucks our heads.
Dennis Cooper has a list of his favorite books. The Driver’s Seat is listed.